Under the Water
by Sage Londyn
Summary: Twenty years ago, mass murderer, Brandon James, left a dark stain on the history of Blair Bradford's hometown. After a year away, she and her mother move back to Lakewood, just as a string of grisly murders make it feel like history repeating over. Soon Blair finds herself in a deadly game of cat and mouse, forcing her to uncover dark family secrets and painful truths. •Noah/OC•
1. Return to Lakewood

**Chapter One: The Return to Lakewood**

* * *

•••

"You look beautiful."

Blair looked over her shoulder from where she was sitting at the vanity in her room to where her mother Emily was standing in the doorway.

"I can't believe I agreed to go to this thing." Blair admitted, nervously running the brush through her brunette hair for what felt like the hundredth time.

Walking further into her daughters room, Emily looked around and blew out a sigh at seeing her teenage daughter had barely unpacked anything from their move the week before.

"One of your classmates died-" She started to say, but was quickly cut off when Blair pointed out, "I was never friends with Nina, honestly I never even liked her… plus, we just moved back to Lakewood and today was my first day back at school."

"Okay." Emily breathed, smoothing the dark blue comforter out on the bed before she sat down and questioned, "Why did you agree to go then?"

"Because Emma invited me and apparently I still have a problem saying no to her when she gives me that face with those hopeful eyes." Blair sighed, shaking her head as she dropped her hairbrush to the vanity with a thud and turned on the bench seat to face her mom.

"That's good though!" Emily exclaimed, offering up a smile as she spoke, "We're back home and you're reconnecting with your old friends, I'm sure soon it will feel like we never even moved away for a year."

"It's not that simple."

"It is, you just have a tendency to make things difficult."

"No, mom… you just don't get it." Blair complained, her eyebrows furrowing with her words. "Everything fell apart near the end of eighth grade anyways, by the time we moved away Emma got inducted into the popular crowd and Audrey threw out everything in her closet that wasn't a few shades lighter than black and I…" Her voice trailed off and with a weak shrug she continued, "I was still the girl with braces and thick framed glasses two sizes too big for my face."

Holding back a laugh her mom pointed out, "You picked those glasses out yourself, honey."

"Yes, because I thought they'd make me look older and distinguished. It wasn't until everyone made fun of me at school that I realized I just looked like an idiot." Blair countered, unable to hold back a chuckle of her own.

Looking down to the dark hardwood flooring, she shook her head and clarified, "The point is… when we moved away from Lakewood, I'd already lost my two best friends and it just really sucks coming back and seeing that hasn't changed. I don't even think Emma and Audrey talk anymore."

"It's tough, I know… but people grow apart, they grow up and meet new people. It's a part of life." Emily said as she stood up and walked over to her daughter's open closet and surveyed the jackets hanging up before picking out a light green sweater jacket and walking back over to hand it to Blair. "But look at it this way, you've changed too!"

"Yeah, finally got my braces off and got contacts-"

"I mean on the inside." Emily argued, "We've been through a lot this past year and you're not the same person you were in eighth grade either. You'll find some new friends and I bet really soon Lakewood is going to start feeling like home again."

Blair opened her mouth to argue her mother's logic on the situation, after all –it had been a long time since her mom had to navigate high school, but before she got the chance they heard a car horn blaring from the street and at the same time her phone lit up with a text.

"It's Emma." Blair said, as she looked up from her phone screen, "She and her boyfriend Will, are here to pick me up."

Standing up she pulled on the soft jacket her mom had given her and admitted, "I know I told you this was a memorial thing for Nina, but full disclosure… it's a party."

"Ooh, I never would have guessed." Her mom teased, arching a brow as she asked, "Is this supposed to be the part where I tell you that you're not allowed to go, maybe even go outside and shoo your ride away?"

"Yes!" Blair exclaimed, cracking a smile and a laugh before she repeated her earlier sentiment, "I can't believe I agreed to go."

"Go on, get out of here." Emily laughed, nodding towards the bedroom door. She watched as Blair picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder before she called out, "Be safe."

•••

"How did you manage to move back into the same house you used to live in?" Emma questioned, as she looked to where Blair was sitting beside her on the couch in the living room of the Maddox lake house on Wren lake, where Nina's memorial was being held.

"We still owned it." Blair explained, nervously twisting the mood ring she always wore on her thumb as she spoke. "My parents just leased it out when we moved to Georgia." Her dark brown eyes darted between Emma and her boyfriend Will Belmont, before she side eyed Brooke Maddox who was sitting on the other side of her.  
Feeling like the spotlight was still shining heavily on her and she needed to fill up the empty space, Blair added, "They were planning on selling it, but good thing they never got around to it since my mom and I moved back."

Emma gave her a smile and nod, but Brooke pushed, "It's just you and your mom?"

"Yep."

"What happened to your dad?" She continued to pry.

"Oh, uh…" She breathed, "The divorce papers said irreconcilable differences… but really the problem was named Monica; a bleached blonde, all legs and no brain secretary who worked for his law firm."

"Wow…" Will breathed, with his gaze dropping to the floor in front of the coffee table he was sitting on.

"Sorry." Blair quickly spilled an apology with a look of disbelief on her face, "Sometimes I just don't know when to shut up."

"I'm sorry." Emma sympathized, she knew firsthand how it felt to go from having both parents to just one. Still able to read her old friend after more than a year apart, she could easily see how nervous Blair was and in attempt to move the conversation away from her and her troubled home life, Emma took a drink of the punch in her cup and asked, "So, Brooke… where's your dad?"

With an emotionless sigh, the teenager looked down to the contents in her own cup and chose to refer to her father on a first name basis, "Quinn has a lady friend in town. I get to throw a party and he gets laid. It's the circle of life."

"Parental sex. TMI." Will complained, still fidgeting and nervously tapping his feet on the floor.

"Calm down." Brooke instructed, before she pointed out, "You can't hold still, you're like a purse dog. What is wrong with you?"

Realizing just how noticeable his nervous behavior was, he admitted, "I'm sorry. Coach is riding my ass. We're supposed to have a scout from Duke at tomorrow's game-"

"The scout will be blown away tomorrow." Emma assured him as she leaned forward and took his hand in her own, pulling him over to the couch with her. "So for tonight, just relax!"

"Well…" He breathed in a low voice, moving his face closer to hers, "Make me."

"I'd say get a room, but I don't want the cleanup." Brooke's face scrunched as she spoke.

Blair held back a laugh at her comment, before holding up her now empty cup and saying, "I'm going to get a refill."  
Mainly it was just an excuse to get away from them. She felt like she hardly knew Emma anymore and having her right beside her on the couch, making out with her boyfriend just made the entire situation ever more uncomfortable.

As Blair stood next to the table that was loaded down with bottles of alcohol, a large bowl of pink punch and what looked to be an entire store isle worth of snack foods. She'd just plucked one of the peanut butter cookies up from a plate when she noticed the entire room had fell into a silence. So much so, that for a moment she'd have sworn even the volume of the music had dropped a couple notches.

When she turned around she saw that all eyes were on Audrey Jensen who'd just arrived to the party with Noah Foster.

Audrey swallowed hard and looked around to everyone who was staring at her –more like gawking as if she were some act in a freak show. Knowing all of the unwanted attention was a result of the video that had gone viral –a video of her in a parking lot, in her car, making out with another girl, she took a few more steps further into the room.

Pulling in a deep breath she announced, "Yeah! I'm the one who kissed a girl." With that she breezed past where Blair was standing at the snack table and plucked a half-empty bottle of tequila up on her way out of the doors leading to the back yard and pool.

"Uh, you know, the star of the viral video. Hey, look, she's kissing a girl, right?" Noah yelled out before he could stop himself. Everyone stared at him with confused expressions and he let out a nervous, wavering laugh.  
He had no idea what had possessed him to say anything at that point, this was probably the reason no one ever invited him to parties.

"Uh, we'll be outside." He mumbled, lowering his head as he scurried towards the same doors Audrey had left out of, silently wishing he hadn't agreed to go to the party in the first place. It was already turning out to be a disaster.

He looked up just in time to keep from running into Blair who was still standing at the snack table.

"Sorry." They both said at the same time, though she had no idea why she was apologizing since she'd been the one standing still.

"It's okay." She added with a smile, as she tried to step to the side to let him past her. She could only imagine he must have been dying a little inside with every passing second he stood in the room. But her attempt to help was foiled when he tried to step to the side at the same time and they only managed to still be standing in each other's way.

With a small laugh, she tried to move to the other side, but again they'd both made the move at the same time and remained in each other's way.

"I'm, uh…" He stammered, shaking his head as his voice wavered with his seemingly ever present nervous laughter. Running a hand through his short hair he added, "I'm just trying to get out of here."

"I know." Blair nodded, smiling at how he seemed even more nervous to be at the party than she was, "And I've been trying to get out of your way."

With that she stepped closer to the table and Noah was finally able to escape all of the eyes that were still on him, as he fled to the backyard.

•••

"I didn't think you'd be here." Audrey admitted, once she found Blair sitting at the edge of the pool.

"Yeah." Blair smiled, "Emma invited me, I tried to make up some excuses… but the girl can still tell when I'm lying."

"That's because you were never a very good liar." Audrey remembered a low laugh on her lips as she sat down beside her.

The pair sat in silence for several minutes before Audrey finally looked over at her and admitted, "I had no idea you were moving back to Lakewood." Pausing for a moment she blew out a breath as she continued, "I guess I just thought you'd have texted me or at least messaged me online."

Staring down to the water lapping against the sides of the pool from the people in the water splashing and playing around, Blair pulled in a breath and shrugged, "We hadn't talked in a like a year Audrey."

"Yeah, but-"

"And you were the one who stopped talking to me before I moved away." Blair pointed out, "After what happened I tried to talk to talk to you, but-"

"Can we not talk about that right now?" Audrey pleaded.

With a nod, Blair looked back to everyone in the pool and Audrey pulled a video camera out of her bag and started filming everyone getting drunk and having fun around them.

It was close to ten minutes later when Emma found them. Kicking off her shoes she sat down by them and hung her legs into the pool as she smiled at the two girls she'd grown up being best friends with.

"Getting anything good?" Emma questioned, nodding to the video camera.

"Yeah, actually, I am. It's like an STD cautionary tale." Audrey joked, and the trio laughed together. All of them really starting to realize how much they'd missed hanging out together.

"So…" Emma's brows raised as she questioned Audrey about the video that had been posted online, "This girl, are you guys, like, a thing?"

"No…" Audrey started to say, as she looked between them.

"No?" Blair questioned with disbelief in her tone and an expression to match.

Audrey looked between them and couldn't help but smile, not only because she really liked Rachel Murray, but because she could recall so many times growing up when Emma and Blair would be pressing her for information about something and giving her those exact faces.

"We met on this film-geek website." She started to explain. "Um, Rachel made these awesome videos about the zombie apocalypse using Legos."

Emma laughed and Blair smiled, "That's awesome."

"Yeah, she's wicked smart and funny… but she hates the way she looks." Audrey said, her smile falling some at the end of her sentence. To her, Rachel was beautiful in every single way, it just hurt to know that she couldn't see herself in the same light.

"Sounds like all of us in eighth grade." Emma commented, earning a response from Audrey, "Yeah. Yeah, but then you got pretty."

Emma looked down to the pool unsure how to respond and Audrey mentally kicked herself for how her words had come out.  
Backtracking, she stammered, "Okay, look, I don't mean that like I like you or anything."

Emma side eyed her and Audrey knew she was just making it worse and she sighed, "I'm not a lesbian."

Looking over to Blair, she restated with more conviction, "I'm not a lesbian."

"I never said you were." Blair nodded, pausing for a moment before adding, "For the record though, I wouldn't care if you were."

"I'm not." She argued.

"It's okay, I get it." Emma spoke up, kicking her legs lazily in the water as she said, "I mean, you're bi-curious. If I was alone in a car with Scarlett Johansson…" Her voice trailed off and she held her arms out to the sides letting them use their imaginations to fill in the blanks.

"Right!" Blair agreed as they all laughed and the unmistakable feeling of nostalgia started to set in for all of them.  
Growing up, they'd been as close as friends could be, vowed hundreds of times that they'd be best friends forever. But then everything had changed towards the end of the eighth grade, with them each changing and trying to find themselves, slowly the trio had grown apart.

"I missed you guys." Audrey finally admitted, stealing the words right from her former friends' thoughts. "I miss this."

"Me too." Blair agreed.

"Same." Emma nodded, looking around as she added, "It's weird, right? This kind of feels like old times –just talking and laughing. Just like we used to."

"True, but it certainly never happened at Brooke Maddox's lake house."

Audrey and Emma both looked at Blair and nodded along in agreement with her words. With a smile on her face, Blair looked down to the water in the pool as she wondered if maybe her mom was right about moving back to Lakewood. Maybe she really could reconnect with the people who used to mean everything to her, maybe the small town could really start to feel like home again.

•••

It was nearly an hour later when Blair found her way over to the tables set up with food and drinks on the back patio of the house, where she found Noah rummaging through one of the metal buckets filled with ice cubes and bottled drinks.

"Hey." She greeted with a smile.

Looking startled, he said, "Hey, uh… what can I get, ya?" As he motioned to the table.

"I think just a water. I drank more of that pink punch then I should have earlier." She admitted.

As he handed her a cold bottle of water he nodded, "The punch is where they get you at parties. You never know how much alcohol is in there."

Taking a drink of the water, she eyed him for a minute before asking, "Been to a lot of parties, huh?"

"A few." He managed to say, his voice reaching a higher pitch as he spilled the lie. Shaking his head at himself he let out the breath that he didn't even realize he'd been holding, as he owned up and said, "Actually no, not really. I don't get invited to any of the parties… which is probably why I'm standing here passing out drinks instead of out there." He said waving his arms a bit too eccentrically towards the large crowd gathered in the back yard as he mumbled, "You know, mingling and stuff that normal teenagers do… and I'm just going to stop talking now."

"It's not a big deal." Blair tried to assure him.

Seeing he'd managed to not chase her off, he extended a hand and said, "I'm Noah."

"Blair-" She began to say, but he cut her off as he admitted, "I know. I remember you."

"Huge dorky glasses and all?" There was a noticeable cringe behind her laugh.

"They weren't that bad." There was a smile on his lips as he spoke, and reached for his glass of the very same punch he'd warned her against drinking too much of.

"They were exactly that bad!" She argued, her straight brunette hair falling into her face as she shook her head.

"Hey, wasn't your picture in the paper last week?" She asked, turning the conversation around and making him feel uncomfortable.

For at least the tenth time that night, he could feel his very soul starting to wither and die inside of him.

"Uh, yes. Yeah, my mom did that." Noah explained, knowing there was no use in lying about it –no matter how much he wanted to go to the grave denying it. "Clearly without asking me first. I'm… well, I'm on the shortlist for an internship with Elon Musk."

"SpaceX, right?" Blair nodded, "You really think he's going to Mars?"

"Um…" He breathed, looking completely blown away that she knew what he was talking about, "Yeah, I really do… and I want to go with."

"Right, that would be so awesome!" She excitedly agreed with him.

"Wow, it's really cool that you know that." He said, smiling widely at her.

Blair nodded, a smile on her own lips as she explained, "Confession… I only know it because I looked it up after I read the piece on you in the paper. I was curious." Tilting her head to the side she added, "I'm probably the only person my age who actually reads the paper. Probably because my mom is the only one on our block who actually still gets the paper and doesn't just read the news online."

"Hey, it's important to support local business." He quickly said, before what she'd said slowly dawned on him and his eyes widened, "Wait… you looked into SpaceX… because of me?"

"Hey, Bradford." Kieran greeted Blair by her last name as he stepped between where she and Noah were standing to grab a bottle of beer from the ice bucket.

"Hey!" She greeted back with a genuine smile at the only person she could currently call a friend. Blair had met Kieran Wilcox when her family had moved to Atlanta a year ago and they'd been friendly with one another at school.

As fate would have it, they'd both ended up moving to Lakewood around the same time. He'd moved there to live with his dad after his mother and step-father were killed in a car accident.  
With a concerned look, she asked, "How are you?"

"I'm good." He quickly answered, before glancing between her and Noah as he gave a small nod and said, "See you later?"

"See you later." She agreed, watching as he walked away.

Noah watched her a few seconds before he shrugged and pointed out, "You two seem pretty friendly…" He shrugged again in an attempt to play it off and pretend her answer wouldn't faze him one way or the other.

"He's sort of my only friend." Blair explained. Seeing the confusion in his expression grow, she added, "We went to school together in Atlanta."

"Oh!" He realized, "Wow, what are the odds you'd both end up here at the same time."

"Right." She laughed.

The patio fell silent, except from the music playing from the outdoor speakers, until he repeated his question from earlier, before they'd been interrupted, "So, you looked up SpaceX because of the article about me in the paper?"

Giving him a coy smile, she held up the now half empty bottle of water and said, "Thanks for the water." Before she turned and headed inside of the house where she'd seen Kieran disappear to a few moments prior.

•••

Sometime later, Blair was sitting inside with a group of people near the fire place as the temperatures outside had started to drop. All the furniture had been filled up and she had chosen to sit on the arm rest of the chair Kieran was sitting on, instead of sitting on the floor.

Just as Noah had found his way into the room, the conversation had turned from people sharing their anything but happy memories of Nina, to speculating the grisly details of her murder.

As a few people left the room, he managed to snag a seat on the couch and looked over to Blair as he threw his hand up in a small wave to her.

"I'm just saying… it's crazy how we were talking about slasher movies in language arts and then Nina got slashed." Riley Marra pointed out with a chill creeping down her spine.

"It sort of went the other way around." Blair argued, glancing around as everyone looked to her, it was the first time she'd spoke up since entering the room. "Nina was dead long before class today."

Taking a large drink from his recently refilled cup of punch, Noah nodded in agreement, "She's right, technically there is no direct correlation."

"Dude, she's scared. Let's not negate that." Jake Fitzgerald, spoke out. Before he leaned forward in his chair and rested a hand on Riley's shoulder.

Knowing that he was clearly hoping a little comforting from him was going to be his ticket into her pants, Riley shrugged him away and argued, "I'm not scared."

Throwing himself back into the plush cushions on the chair, Jake let out a frustrated groan.

"Maybe we should be scared." Kieran offered up.

"Stop it!" Blair laughed, playfully hitting his arm. He shot her a smile before adding, "I'm serious, come on. A bunch of drunk teenagers at a party by the lake where your homegrown killer died. It's like a natural slasher setting."

Noah looked between them before taking a few more drinks from his cup and claiming the speaker's floor when he argued with Kieran, "No, see, at a party like this, you're actually pretty safe from your typical Jason or Michael Myers type."

"Safe?" Someone from the group scoffed at him and Riley nodded, "There's the lake where Brandon James died… teenagers, hormones and beer."

"Safety in numbers." Blair pointed out, looking back to Noah as he nodded drank more of the punch from his cup and agreed, "Exactly. We're together and you know slasher dude isn't the terminator –shooting his way through thirty cops in a police precinct. No, he's a wolf… waiting for one of us to wander off alone."

"That's awfully sexist. Who says the slasher is male and not female?" Blair offered up for debate, and though her question earned a smile from Noah, his words were growing more slurred as the effects of the alcohol in the punch set in. "Ninety-nine percent of the time in a slasher movie, the killer is typically male."

"Maybe this isn't a typical situation." Blair reasoned, "Maybe this time the slandered slasher film rules don't apply."

"Fair enough." Noah slurred, trying to take another drink from his cup only to realize it was already empty.

"See." Kieran stated, "If the rules don't apply; maybe we should be scared."

"No…" Noah said, as the room started to look like he was viewing it from a funhouse mirror and his eyes could barely focus. "Survival in a party like this is simple… just don't wander off alone."

Nodding along with his own words, he felt dizzy and the cup fell from his hands as he laid down on the couch and managed to tell everyone, "Goodnight." Before he passed out.

•••

It was going on midnight when Blair was wandering around the yard trying to find someone to give her a ride home.

She found herself wishing she'd driven herself instead of letting Emma talk her into riding there with her and Will. For her old friend, the night had gone from bad to worse when she'd found out that Will had slept with Nina.

Kicking a glass bottle along with her in the grass, she figured her best bet would be to try and find Kieran to see if he'd drove there. Though she had no idea where to even begin to look for him, he'd mostly been staying out of sight to avoid Brooke who'd been hanging all over him like he was her newest conquest.  
A feeling Blair could relate to, considering that Jake had been eyeing her like she was a piece of meat for the most of the night too. Which at first was laughable considering in middle school he'd have never given her the time of day.

" _Guys, help!"_

Blair came to a stop in the shadows underneath some tall trees near one of the buildings on the property and looked around when she heard a voice calling for help in the distance.

" _Hello! Somebody help!"_

Closing her eyes, she tried to focus on the direction the voice was coming from. She couldn't hear them very well, but at first she'd have sworn it sounded like Noah.

Her eyes snapped open when she heard nearby footsteps and she whirled around to see Kieran and Emma walking out of the small, plant filled shed she'd been near.

"Hey." She greeted, looking between them and wondering what they'd been doing in there alone.

"Did you hear someone yelling for help?" Emma questioned as she walked up to her.

"Probably a prank." Kieran tossed in his two-cents on the matter.

The trio started to head back towards the house and Blair was just about to ask for a ride home, when they heard water splashing from the lake.

"Is someone in the lake?" Emma asked, squinting in the darkness and trying to make sense of the shadows in the dark of night and the steam rising off the water.

As they all moved closer to the water's edge, they could see someone a ways out of the shore for a split second before they went under the surface and the water started to still.

"What the hell…" Blair breathed stepping closer to try and get a better look at what was going on.

Barely a second later Noah emerged from the dark depths gasping and sputtering, his arms flailing wildly at his sides trying to stay above the water and get a breath. It was too dark to see anything, but he knew something had grabbed him.

He frantically tried to swim towards the shore, but he was only swimming in place as something seemed to be holding him back and then before he could even catch his breath he was pulled back below the surface.

"Oh my god!" Emma yelled, and they all three took off running for the water. Emma came to a stop a short distance from the water's edge and Kieran started to take his shirt and jacket off in preparation for going into the lake.

Blair ran right past Emma and straight into the lake she'd heard horror stories about as a kid, fully clothed and ignoring Kieran's calls after her as he told her to wait. She swam as fast as she could towards where Noah was still violently struggling to keep his head above water and not drown.  
She didn't even think about what she was doing, she couldn't. This was the very lake where Brandon James had died, some people thought the water was haunted. Other's swore he'd put a curse on the lake seconds before dying. As unlikely as that all seemed, growing up in Lakewood there had been a deep leeriness and fear instilled in her when it came to Wren Lake and if she stopped for a moment to think about how far out she'd swam, she'd probably have lost her nerve and turned back.

"Noah!" She called out as she swam up to him, trying to get his attention while he still flailed in a complete and utter state of panic, splashing water into her face as she tried to help him.

Sputtering on the lake water, she grabbed his arm and started to try and pull him away when she felt something brush up against her leg, something that felt far bigger than a fish and there was split moment of terror where she completely froze before she could have sworn she felt a hand around her ankle and then she was jerked below the water.

When she finally kicked free of whatever had gotten a hold of her and managed to get her head above water, she gasped loudly for air and kicked wildly to try and deter whatever had grabbed her from being able to get close enough to her to pull her back under.

"Calm down. Calm down." Kieran said, as reached the pair in the water and managed to get an arm around Noah to keep the struggling and terrified teenager afloat.

"I think he's caught on something." He said, looking to Blair who was staring back at him wide-eyed, now fully aware that someone or something big enough to drag a person underwater was out there with them and it was far too dark to see anything.

Nodding when his words finally sank in, she mustered up the strength, oxygen and courage to dive down into the water by Noah and blindly feeling around for anything –or anyone who might be holding him there. Finally her fingers brushed over something rough and cordlike, which seemed to be wrapped around his legs and ankles.

Once she managed to get it off him she swam back to the surface and the three swam to the small dock, where Kieran got Noah up the ladder and then motioned for Blair to go, before he finally got out of the water himself.

"Hey, come here!" Emma said as she grabbed onto Noah's arm and helped him onto the sand, before turning back to make sure the other two had made it onto dry land.

A handful of people left at the party started to emerge from behind the trees, at the front was a clearly proud Jake laughing as Noah still fought to catch his breath.

Grabbing up one of the blankets laying on the ground, Blair knelt down and draped it over him, "Just breathe, try to breathe." She instructed all while fighting for her own breath and looking out at the lake trying to see what had grabbed her.

"Yo, kiss him, Blair! Breath of life!" Jake loudly yelled, still holding onto his bottle of beer and laughing as if Noah hadn't almost drowned just minutes before.

"Jake, shut up!" Emma yelled as she grabbed another blanket up from the sand and draped it over Blair's shoulders and back. Then to Will's disdain, she also draped one around Kieran's shoulders and bare upper body.

"He could have died!" Blair yelled, finally able to catch her own breath enough that she could start to calm down.

"Hey, he was the first one to pass out. It's Wren Lake tradition." He defended his actions, and clearly didn't see what everyone was so upset over.

Looking up to Blair, Noah stuttered out, "What was that –that grabbed me?"

"I don't know." She answered, concern still heavy on her face and he didn't miss the glint of fear in her eyes.

"Nobody grabbed you, spaz. We just dropped you off." Jake said, rolling his eyes and breaking out into another fit of laughter.

Kneeling down beside them, Emma started to pull some tangled up fishing line from Noah's feet and she said, "You were stuck on fishing line."

"It didn't feel like fishing line." He argued, still trying desperately to catch his breath while his heart raced wildly in his chest and it seemed like his every attempt to inhale was cut short by a coughing fit and spitting up lake water. "It felt like someone was pulling me down."

Blair didn't say anything, but she didn't believe the fishing line was what had caused Noah to nearly drown. She still could have sworn she felt a hand on her own ankle when she'd been pulled beneath the surface.

"Noah, Noah!" Audrey yelled, as she stumbled up on the crowd gathering around the scene on the sand. "Oh my god!" She gasped, it didn't take her long to connect the dots when she saw her soaking wet friend still gasping for breath, stripped down to his boxers.

"I'm okay." He choked out, "I'm okay."

Shrugging off the blanket that Emma had wrapped around her, Blair stood up and she and Audrey pulled him up to his feet.

"Your friends are great, Emma. Thank you for the invite." Audrey nearly spat out as she looked back to her old friend and the fuzzy feelings of nostalgia she'd been plagued with since their talk earlier had now long since faded.

"Come on." She said in a much softer tone, as she did her best to hold the blanket around her shaking friend and lead him towards where she'd parked, with Blair following close behind them. She couldn't stomach being at the party for another single second.

•••

"Thanks for the ride." Blair said with a smile, as she walked into her kitchen where Audrey was sitting on one of the tall chairs at the kitchen island. She'd changed into some dry clothes, but her hair was still wet.

"No problem." She quickly answered, before saying in a sincere tone and honesty in her eyes, "Thank you for saving Noah."

"It was more so Kieran than me." She admitted, getting two mugs out of the cabinet for hot chocolate. "I got out to where Noah was and then…" Her voice trailed off.

"Then… what?" Audrey asked, sliding off the seat and going to the drawer where the silverware used to be kept when they were growing up.

She wasn't a hundred percent that someone had pulled her under, and she didn't see anyone else emerge from the lake either. Maybe she'd been so panicked that she'd imagined it or possibly even got hooked on the same fishing line that Noah was tangled in. Ignoring the question and pointing towards a different drawer, she said, "Spoons are in there."

"Crazy how I can still remember how the kitchen used to be set up." Audrey said, shaking her head before looking back at her old friend and asking, "Is it weird being back?"

"Yeah, it's so weird. Our first day back we pulled up outside and there was this moment where it felt like I was home, you know? I lived in this house my entire life… but then we came inside and everything was different. It didn't even smell the same."

"Give it time." Audrey suggested, as she handed her friend a spoon, flashed her a smile and added, "Your mom will stock up on those lemongrass candles and the house will start smelling like it used to in no time."

"Ew! You know how much I hated those candles." She laughed, as she stirred the hot chocolate mixture into her cup of hot water.

Sitting back down in the seat she'd been at on the island, Audrey grabbed a small handful of the marshmallows from the open bag and dropped them into her cup, before looking back to Blair and saying, "For what it's worth, I'm glad your back. I really have missed you."

"I can still remember the summer after eighth grade –when my parents sat me down to tell me that my dad had an offer to make partner at a law firm in Atlanta and we were moving at the end of the month. They both had this look on their face like they were delivering the worst news, but honestly it was sort of a relief." Looking up, she locked eyes with Audrey and continued, "Somehow the idea of starting ninth grade in a new place where I didn't know anyone seemed easier to stomach than starting high school here. I mean, by the end of eighth grade, Emma was already shoved so far up Brooke and Nina's asses that she even bailed on our annual end of school year sleepover and you'd completely stopped talking to me after-"

"Don't say it." Audrey breathed, her eyes pining shut as she spoke. Wishing she could hop in a time machine and go back to right her wrongs.

"After we kissed." Blair stated, ignoring her pleas and finishing her train of thought.

"No, I kissed you. There is a difference." Audrey pointed out, blowing out a sigh and staring back down to the still full cup of hot chocolate.

"It's not a big deal." Blair argued, "It never was a big deal-"

"I'm not a lesbian!" Audrey quickly blurted out.

"I never said you were!" Blair said back, her own voice raised, "I never once said you were, but even if you were there is nothing wrong with it. Audrey you were my best friend, I literally couldn't have cared less if you liked girls, or boys or both. It didn't matter to me then and it doesn't matter now."

"It wasn't that simple inside of my own head… I was so confused and completely mortified. I didn't know how to act around you after that and I…" Her voice trailed off, "I just need to explain what happened, okay?"

Taking a drink from her glass, Blair nodded to let her know that she was listening.

"You remember that New Year's party at Riley's house that Emma dragged us along to that year?"

"Of course I do, I was terrified to go." Blair remembered. It was the first real party they'd been to. It was right after Emma had started to be accepted into the popular crowd and was still trying to hold onto her lifelong friendships with Blair and Audrey.

"So was I." Audrey agreed. "We'd been there for probably an hour or so and I'd wandered away from you and Emma, I ended up in the basement where some people were playing spin the bottle and they convinced me to join them. And I remember not wanting to play, but this was the first real party we'd been to and I wanted to fit in, so I joined the circle and when it was my time to spin the bottle it landed on another girl in the group."

Taking a break from the story, and a few more sips of her hot chocolate Audrey pulled in a deep breath and continued, "I thought 'no way is this happening', but then she leaned over and kissed me… I mean like really kissed me and it felt completely different then the time in seventh grade when I'd went to movies with Aaron Yardley and he kissed me during the ending credits, but it was like… a good different."

"You never told me that."

"I spent the next few weeks completely confused. I didn't know if I was gay or straight, if it was maybe just the way she'd kissed me or if there was something wrong with me." Audrey remembered, breaking eye contact as she spoke. "I was scared, Blair."

Taking another deep breath, she cleared her throat and added, "And then I came over to stay the night with you and not knowing who I was or who I liked was the scariest thing and for some reason apparently scarier than kissing my best friend. I don't know, I guess I thought maybe if I kissed another girl and felt the same way I felt at the party… then I'd know."

"Did it feel the same way?" Blair questioned.

"No." Audrey laughed, "It was like kissing my sister and then all I could do was stare at you in shock, I couldn't believe I'd just done that. And I thought you'd push me away or god, I don't know, even slap me or something. But no, instead you looked right at me and calmly told me that you loved me as a friend, but that you were into guys… and then you just picked up our empty cups and went to the kitchen for refills and I sat there dying inside. I couldn't even begin to find the words to explain to you what had happened; I don't think I could even explain it to myself at that point."

The room fell into silence again before Audrey continued, "You acted like nothing had happened and for the rest of the night I was terrified you were going to think I was into you and I thought I'd ruined everything. We'd already lost Emma and then I went and kissed you and all I could think was that after my mom came to pick me up from your house the next day, that you'd never want to see me again." The realization of how wrong she'd been fully sank in and she softly said, "Instead I pulled away from you until we didn't even talk anymore. I'm sorry, Blair."

"Audrey…" Blair breathed, "I notice things, you know? You were my best friend, we spent so much time together. The three of us would go see a movie and when we'd leave, Emma and I would be gushing about how hot the guy was and you'd keep steering the conversation back to how pretty the girls were. I always sort of suspected that you were into girls, but like I said it didn't bother me."

"Yeah, but I kissed you." Audrey pointed out.

With a smile and a laugh, Blair admitted, "That didn't freak me out. I'll tell you a secret, okay? Do you remember in sixth grade when a group of us went to the Fun Zone to play laser tag and games in the arcade and all?"

"Yeah, you completely kicked my ass at air hockey." She laughed.

"Yes! And Emma was obsessed with Danny and I had that ridiculous crush on Tyler? The day before we were going… Emma and I practiced kissing each other so that we'd be good at it just in case the guys we liked, liked us back."

Her mouth hung open in shock and Audrey asked, "Are you serious?"

"We were kids." Blair laughed, "we were all stupid kids and I don't think any of us knew who we were at that point." Looking to her friend she questioned, "Are you still confused?"

"No." Audrey answered with a smile, "I'm attracted to people because of who they are –gender doesn't matter."

Smiling back at her, Blair clanked her mug of hot chocolate against Audrey's and toasted, "Here's to knowing who we are and being much more put together than our middle school selves."

"And to learning who your real friends are." Audrey added, "I'll drink to that."

•••

* * *

 **A/N- Thank you for reading my first chapter. ^_^**

 **This is going to be a Noah/OC story, and as much as I really did love his relationship with Riley on the show – I highly doubt I'll be including it in my story.**  
 **I plan to follow along with the series, but I'll be changing some things around and adding Blair's storylines in as I go.**

 **I hope you all enjoyed it so far and that you'll take a couple moments to let me know what you thought. :)**


	2. Hello, Blair

**Chapter Two: Hello, Blair**

 **•••**

"Blair." Noah called out as he cut across the morning crowd in the school hallway to where he spotted her at her locker. "Morning." He added, coming to a stop beside her and adjusting the straps on his backpack.

"Oh, hey." She greeted, glancing over at him for a moment before her attention went back to the books stacked on the top metal shelf.

"Good morning." He said with a nervous laugh forming on his lips at the realization he'd already greeted her with nearly the same words just seconds before.

"Morning." She replied, arching a brow as she looked over at him and held back at laugh of her own. Turning to face him, a serious look graced her features when she questioned, "How are you?"

"I'm good. I'm okay." He internally cringed as his inability to slow his speaking down to a normal pattern. Much like the night before at the party, his being around her was causing his heart to pick up speed and he was also aware of his palms growing increasingly sweaty as he clutched onto the shoulder straps of his book bag and now he seemed to be rushing through his words as if he couldn't say them fast enough.

"You sure?" She asked, a slight look of disbelief prevalent on her face as he stared back at her with his mouth slightly hanging open.

"Yeah." He nodded almost frantically, and just like at the party he could feel his soul starting to wither and die within him. What he wouldn't have given to have been graced the calmness and charm that he'd seen boys on the basketball team use to woo the girls.  
"I'm just going to…" He breathed, rubbing a hand through his neatly combed hair and leaving it look slightly disheveled. Pulling a quick, harsh breath between his teeth he shrugged, "I'll see you in class?"

With that he turned around and took a few steps away before coming to a stop and remembering why he had decided to approach her in the first place that morning before classes began.

Turning back around he watched as she grabbed a text book off the shelf and shut her locker. Realizing he needed to catch her before she disappeared into the shuffling crowds of half-asleep students, he called out, "Blair!"

"Noah?" She laughed, turning back to face him as he rushed back over to her. She was just about to tell him how she needed to make it across the school before the bell rang, but he said, "I just wanted to thank you, you know for helping save my life… in the lake last night, when-"

"I remember what happened." She said with a small, empathetic smile.

"Yeah, of course you do." He nodded, looking down to his shoes for a moment before trying to make light of the situation and adding, "I would have thanked you last night, but it was hard to say much of anything when I couldn't stop coughing up the lake water."

"Tell me about it." She agreed, "I swear it took half a bottle of shampoo to get the lake smell out of my hair."

"You're welcome, by the way." She quickly added, "Though, in truth, I wasn't much help. If Kieran hadn't been right behind me, we'd both probably have drowned."

"Either way, there were a lot of people still at the party and you were the first one to come to my aide." Offering up a smile; he continued, "It was actually pretty bad-ass when you think about it. You just charged right into lake Brandon James died in –not a lot of people would have the balls to do that."

"I do have my ballsy moments." She laughed. Shrugging she breathed her admission, "Actually, I have a bad habit of diving head first into situations without thinking them through. I don't tend to think about the consequences until after the fact and by then…"

Her voice trailed off and he caught the glimpse of emotion in her eyes, before she shook her head and cleared her throat, "Well, by the time you're hit with the consequences it's too late."

"You, uh…" He breathed, "You seem to be speaking from personal experience, there." Noah pointed out, taking a step closer to her and wondering where her mind had gone.

"I just, I sort of went through something when I lived in Atlanta. It's not important though." She quickly dismissed, only Noah got the feeling that it was a big deal and commented, "Sounds kind of important."

"I was mainly talking about what happened in the lake." Blair said, nearly cutting his statement off as she spoke. "I charged in there to help you and didn't really give much thought to what was going to happen when I got to you –like, if there was someone or something in the water. Kieran tried to tell me to wait, but I just drove right in."

Swallowing hard, he nodded. In truth, he was still haunted by what had happened the night before, not only how his classmates had left him out on a floating dock to fend for himself in nothing but his boxer shorts, but in the way that he could have sworn something was in the water with him.

Trying to make a joke over it, he laughed, "Just some handsy fishing line apparently."

His words earned a small smile from her, but it didn't reach her eyes –something he easily picked up on.

"You okay?"

"It's just…" Blair sighed, "We can make a joke about it, but you almost died, Noah. And if we're being one-hundred percent honest… the last time I checked, fishing line wasn't capable of sprouting hands and dragging a person under water."

With slightly widened eyes, he realized, "You felt something too?"

"More like someone." Her voice lowered and she leaned in as she spoke, "When I got to you, you were frantic and flailing your arms every which way. I was trying to help you, but you kept splashing all this water in my face and then something brushed against my leg under the water and I just remember completely freezing with realizing that whatever was in that lake with us was way bigger than a fish. I could have sworn I felt a hand on my ankle too, right as I got dragged down."

The faint scent of her perfume tickled his nose, and it took his normally fast brain an unusually long time to process everything she'd said. Something he immediately regretted, when she clearly took his lack of response as disbelief.

Stepping back, Blair tried to act unfazed and shrugged, "Hey, maybe we really are caught in some real life horror story."

"Half of the town swears that Brandon James is back and the others think Tyler killed Nina." Noah nodded, before admitting to her, "I thought someone was in the lake last night too."

"The killer could have been in the water with us." Blair stated the obvious, but saying it out loud forced the weight of the words to start sinking in and suddenly her skin still felt slimy from the lake, like she needed another hour in the shower to wash the feeling away.

The bell rang and she turned to head in the direction of her first class. Pausing for a moment to turn back at him and ask, "Hey… you're the slasher movie expert. So, what do you think? Is Brandon James really back? Or did Tyler kill Nina?"

"You know…" Noah said, as he started to walk with her, even though his first class was in the opposite direction, "You have to remember that the "who-dun-it", may not be all that important in our story."

"So the question is more of a 'why'? Why did they target Nina?" Blair guessed, causing Noah to smirk as he looked over at her and argued "No."

"What I'm saying is that you need to forget it's a horror story. Forget that someone might die at every turn." He added.

Blair's eyebrows raised as they continued to walk together and he couldn't help but smile at her clear interest in everything he was saying. There weren't a whole lot of people he could have these conversations with.  
As it was, the sheriff had already stopped him on his way into the school to ask if he could come in for questioning the next morning.

"You see." Noah continued, nodding towards their English classroom where their teacher, Mr. Branson was standing far too close to Brooke, who was sitting on his desk. "You have to care if the smokin' hot lit teacher seems a little too interested in his female students."

Motioning to the basketball team noisily making their way past them down the hallway all dressed in red and white uniforms, Noah commented, "You have to care of the team wins the big game."

"You, uh…" He breathed, running his tongue over his lips as he looked around for another example to point out. His eyes stopped on where Will was trying to talk to Emma, but she slammed her locker and walked away from him. With a nod in their direction, Noah sad, "You have to care if the smart, pretty girl, forgives the dumb jock."

"So by taking the horror element out of it, it's pretty much your everyday teen drama?" She laughed, coming to a stop outside of her classroom.

"Exactly." Noah nodded, the smirk still on his lips as he spoke, "You get attached to them, their struggles become your own. You root for them, you love them. So when they are brutally murdered… it hurts."

With an unreadable look in her eyes, Blair pointed out, "You've really given a lot of thought to all of this."

"I think about this stuff." He shrugged, the proud smirk falling from his lips as he started to wonder if he'd just scared her off. He made a mental note that he should tone back on his morbid thoughts when speaking to people he didn't know so well, this sort of thing was probably why the police wanted to speak to him in the first place.

"Okay." Blair nodded, glancing behind her to the classroom that was starting to fill up, before turning her attention back to Noah. "So, say you add the horror elements back into the teen drama. How does it end?"

"You might not like the answer." Noah cautioned.

"I haven't cared for much of anything since I moved back to Lakewood." Blair gave him a coy smile when she added, "Except talking to you."

Appearing stunned by the comment, it took him a while to find his voice again, and he stammered out, "You really want to know how it ends?"

"I do." She nodded.

Looking around them, he took a step closer and lowered his voice so that anyone walking past wouldn't hear them. "Everyone has secrets. Everyone tells lies and everyone is fair game…"

"Even the girl who just moved back home?" Blair tried to joke, but there was an uneasy feeling in her stomach.

Nodding, Noah stated, "Until there's no one left."

"Great!" She sarcastically remarked, shaking her head and wishing she hadn't asked him in the first place. Without even thinking she breathed, "So I pretty much left one horror story behind, to move right into a different one?"

"What are you talking about?" Noah questioned, but didn't get an answer as the bell rang and he barely got a 'see you later' out of Blair before she rushed into the classroom.

 **•••**

"Oh, I didn't know anyone was in here." Blair said, as she found Emma sitting on the floor against a wall in the girl's bathroom on the other side of the school from the loud, bustling cafeteria.

"Yeah." Emma weakly laughed, "With it being lunch time, I didn't really expect anyone to be on this side of the school." Clearing her throat she looked at her old friend and asked, "What are you doing in here?"

"Uh, thinking about pulling a Cady from Mean Girls, and eating my lunch in here alone." She half-joked, but Emma laughed like there was no truth to her words.  
The Blair she knew, might not have ever been super popular, but she was also never the type to shy away from crowds. It didn't immediately occur to her that the girl who moved back home, might just be quite a bit different from when she moved away.

"I couldn't find Kieran in the cafeteria, and Audrey was sitting with Noah." Blair admitted, shrugging as she added, "Which is great, only I think the only conversations I've ever had with him have been about serial killers and I don't know, I just wanted to spend lunch alone, but clearly you did too and you've claimed this spot already, so I'll go."

"No, Blair… you can stay." Emma called out, patting the tile floor next to her as she spoke. "It's not you that I'm avoiding." With a shrug she continued, "I just don't think I handled being around the masses right now, but I wouldn't mind your company."

Slowly sitting down and laying her school bag in her lap, Blair looked over to Emma and asked, "Anything you want to talk about?"

The blonde looked down and smiled, a year apart and Blair was still the type of person who'd ask what was wrong, and really care about the answer. She'd missed her, missed having her to talk too. Growing up, she'd always been able to tell her anything and she never felt judged. It had been a long time since she'd felt that way.

"Not really." Emma admitted, "But I think I might have to."

Blair readjusted on the floor, and Emma pulled in a deep breath before she asked, "Are you and Kieran just friends?" Her eyes pinned shut as she added, "I just mean, I know you guys know each other from Atlanta and I was just wondering if there was something between you. You seem comfortable with each other… pretty close."

"We're friends." Blair answered with nothing but honesty in her tone. "We've only ever been friends." With raised brows she questioned, "Does this have anything to do with you guys coming out of the greenhouse alone at the party?"

"We kissed." Emma admitted, seeming to hardly believe the words she was saying. She wasn't sure if it was the beer and spiked punch she'd been drinking, or if finding out Will had slept with Nina, had made her want to do something to hurt him back.  
She never imagined herself kissing someone else while she was still with Will, especially not a guy that she'd only just met.

"Okay." Blair nodded, "Is that why you're hiding out in here?"

"It's why I needed to talk to you about it." Emma quickly said, "It's nice having you back, you know? I meant it when I told you how much I missed you and the last thing I'd want would be to mess things up between us because of kissing some guy."

"Kieran is more than just some guy." Blair un-intentionally snapped, leading Emma to wonder if Blair was being honest about how she felt.

Sighing at herself, Blair said, "That didn't come out right. I meant what I said, we're just friends. But that's it, he's more than 'just some guy', he's my friend."

"Right." Emma nodded, adding with a smile, "I was just thinking about in fifth grade when we swore we'd be friends forever and not let anything come between us, even when we both had a crush on the same guy."

The memory earned a smile from Blair, though she bit her tongue at pointing out how they'd both let many things come between them since they'd made that vow.

"To answer your question." Emma began, "I'm in here because I'm avoiding Will, mainly. He expects me to just forgive him for sleeping with Nina, and I know no one is perfect. We all make mistakes, but that was such a huge mistake and I honestly feel like an idiot. I really thought we had something special."

"Don't do that." Blair argued, "You always internalize everything bad that happens, like it's all your fault and it's not. Whatever reasons Will had for ever having sex with Nina is because of him, and not because of you."

"I know." Emma nodded, twirling her blonde hair around her finger as she nodded. A tell-tale sign that there was more to the situation then what she was letting on.

"Then what's going on?" Blair pushed.

Letting out a small sigh, Emma confided. "I just keep going over everything in my head. All the sweet moments since we started dating and then wondering how many times I overlooked things because of how much I liked Will. Maybe if I stopped trying to believe that deep down everyone is good, then maybe I'd get hurt less."

"Maybe." Blair agreed, "But your want to always see the best in people is one of your best traits, Em."

"Either way, it doesn't change what happened. Will slept with Nina, Brooke knew the entire time and never told me until she'd had too much to drink and it slipped out, and then as if the entire situation wasn't messy enough –I kissed Kieran in the greenhouse."  
Rubbing her hands over her face, her voice was muffled as she added, "I'm just so confused about it all."

"Do you regret it?"

"What?"

"Kissing Kieran… do you regret kissing him?"

Emma's mouth opened, but she soon realized she didn't have an answer at the ready. Or at least not the answer she expected to have. Technically she was still in a relationship with Will and she should have felt bad for the kiss.

"Two wrongs don't make a right." Emma vaguely replied, though she knew Blair wouldn't let her off that easy.

"Do you regret it?" Blair repeated.

"Truthfully…" Emma breathed, before she closed her eyes and exhaled, "No, I don't regret it."

"Then maybe you're not as confused about it as you think you are." Blair offered up what seemed to be the simplest bit of wisdom, but the words hit her friend hard.

The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch and both girls got to their feet and began dusting off their clothes.

Finally, Blair looked at her and said, "Look, I don't know Will Belmont very well, actually, I don't know him at all. But I do know Kieran, and underneath that tough exterior, he is a really good guy, Em. The truth is, I don't think I'd have survived Atlanta without him-"

"What happened?" Emma asked, cutting her off and growing worried by the broken look that filled Blair's brown hues.

"I don't want to talk about it." Blair stated, her tone making the room feel frigid.

"There was a time when we told each other everything." Emma couldn't help but point out. Everytime she got around Blair, it started to feel like old times again and it hurt to know she was holding something back.

"The point is; I don't know Will, but I know Kieran and I don't want to see him get hurt. So maybe you should really work on figuring out what you want before the situation gets any messier." Blair said, as she pulled the strap of her bag on over her shoulder and turned to leave the room –ignoring Emma's voice as she called after her.

 **•••**

With a tired sigh, Blair sat down at her computer desk and opened up her laptop with a plan to finish up the last of her homework for the night. A plan which quickly got tossed to the side as she instead went to check her new social media pages she'd set up earlier that week.

She'd been hesitant to make new accounts since deleting all of hers while she was in Atlanta. In truth, she still wasn't sure about having an online presence again, but she'd been working hard to put everything that had happened behind her and get back to a state of normal. Though, she wasn't entirely sure she knew what normal meant anymore, let alone if it were still an achievable state of existence to strive for.

The breath she'd pulled in between her teeth had nestled in for an extended stay in her lungs while she looked over the short list of her newest followers on Instagram. Her eyes slightly wide and highly alert as she scanned for any names or pictures of people she knew from Atlanta, or any profiles that looked like fake accounts.

Finally letting out the breath she'd been holding, a smile spread over her lips when she saw Noah was following her.

Moving the cursor over his name, she paused for a moment before finally clicking it and opening up his page.

Curiosity got the best of her, and before she could stop herself she was clicking through one photo after another. There were only a few actual pictures of him on there. There were a few of him and Audrey, several pics of a cat –which judging from the captions on the posts, she gathered he must not be too fond of. She wasn't the least bit surprised as she clicked through several horror movie memes and found several pictures documenting his high score achievements on video games; most of which she'd never ever heard of.

Just as she came across one of his few selfies, she heard her mom ask, "And who is that?"

Looking over her shoulder to where her mom was hovering, Blair admitted, "His name is Noah Foster."

Emily's eyes squinted for a mere second before they widened and she remembered, "Wasn't he in the paper?"

"Yeah, the SpaceX thing." Blair nodded, looking back to her computer.

When her daughter didn't offer up any more information, Emily asked, "You like him?"

"He's Audrey's friend." Blair explained, clicking to the next picture of some sort of collectable action figures, she stared at it for a moment before continuing, "He's nice."

"You do like him, don't you?" Her mom picked up on her change in behavior and smiled. At first moving back home to Lakewood sounded like a good idea, but after one of her daughters classmates had been murdered, she'd been wondering if they should have just started over fresh somewhere else. But it seemed like Blair was adjusting to life there nicely and after everything they'd been through, that was really all she could hope for.

"I never said that!" Blair quickly exclaimed, and her mother argued, "Well, I don't see you looking up pictures of Audrey's other friends."

"I don't think she has any other friends."

"There's that girl from the video-"

"Mom!" Blair gasped, cutting her off as she stood up and turned around to face her. "How did you even see that?"

"I do go online, you know. That video was everywhere." Emily pointed out, before she held her hands up and said, "I'm not judging. You know I don't care if she's gay-"

"She swears she's not a lesbian." Blair corrected her.

"Either way!" Emily said, loudly speaking over her daughter. "How's she holding up?"

"Better than I would be." Blair admitted, "She's not hiding or anything, she's sort of owning what happened. I'm proud of her."

Emily smiled, until her gaze went back to the computer and she asked, "Did you make a new Instagram account?"

When her daughters gaze fell to the floor, she sighed in disappointment, "Blair…"

"Everyone has an Instagram, mom." She defended.

"What about Facebook and Chirpster? Did you rejoin those sites too?" She pushed, the disappointed expression on her face growing by the second.

"It's not a big deal!" Blair tried to brush it off, "I'm keeping an eye on my followers and I haven't gotten any harassing messages. If someone from Atlanta contacts me, I'll call dad. It's okay."

"It is not okay." Emily softly said, though her tone was stern. "Putting yourself back out there like that…" Blowing out a sigh, she pointed out, "You kids don't get it. Everything you put online is there forever… and Blair, can't people use social media outlets to track your movements?"

"It's not like I'm tagging where I'm at twenty-four/seven, mom. In fact, I don't ever tag my location. I'm being careful. You can trust me." She pleaded.

"I do trust you." Emily assured her, nodding to the open computer as she added, "It's everyone else that I don't trust."

Not wanting to fight with her mom, or be reminded again of everything that happened before they moved back to Lakewood, Blair said, "I need to finish up my homework."

"You sure you'll be fine here tonight?" Emily asked, "Maybe I shouldn't have picked up a shift in the E.R tonight."

"I'll be fine here alone. I'm probably going to be going to bed soon anyways." Blair offered up a smile. Moving her hands in a shooing motion she said, "Now go on, Dr. Bradford… go save some lives."

Cracking a smile, Emily said, "I'll try to be back in the morning in time to drop you off at school-"

"Kieran's coming by in the morning to take me to school anyways, don't worry about it."

After giving her mom a hug and following her to the door to lock up after she left for the nightshift at the hospital, Blair returned to her bedroom and plopped back into her desk chair.

After failing again to work on her homework, she ended up back on social media and had accepted Facebook friend requests from a few different people. It was mere seconds after accepting Noah's request that her phone rang with the number showing up as unknown.

"Hello?" She asked as she brought the phone up to her ear.

" _Hello, Blair."_

Her eyebrows lowered at the unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line.

"Who is this?" She questioned.

" _Guess."_

Her posture straightened and tensed, fighting against the urge to just end the call and shut her phone off, she flatly stated, "I'm not really in the mood. Seriously, who is this? Because you've got about three seconds until I'm hanging up-"

" _I'm closer than you think."_

"What does that even mean?" She demanded to know. A sick feeling rose in her stomach and her skin felt prickly, like watching a horror movie and knowing the killer was right around the next corner.

" _Figure it out."_

With that the voice on the other end of the line broke off into a laugh, which made the air in Blair's room feel like it had been depleted of every last ounce of oxygen.

It no longer felt like her own, safe space. The room now felt like there were eyes staring at her from every corner, like she were no longer alone in the house.

Standing up, she kept the phone pressed to her ear and walked over to her open bedroom door and looked out into the hallway, staying as silent possible to listen for any sign of movement.

" _Are you scared?"_

"No." She surprised herself with how strong her own voice sounded, despite the fact her knees were starting to shake.

" _Then why are you checking in the hallway?"_

Her mouth hung open with a feeling like a hand had reached through her sternum and squeezed all the air from her lungs.

"You… you're watching me?" She somehow managed to say as she looked around, before darting over to her bedroom window and looking out to the streetlight illuminated street.

" _Are you really that surprised? That is what you want, right? On Instagram and Facebook? All those smiling pictures and fake perfect lives."_

Pulling her curtains shut, Blair leaned her back against the wall and stared at her bedroom doorway as she hissed into the phone, "This isn't funny anymore. Who the hell is this?"

" _You'll learn the truth soon enough, for now all you need to know is that I'm the one who's going to tear it all down."_

The other end of the phone went silent and she slowly moved the curtains to peek outside again, but she still didn't see anyone.

When her computer chimed with a message alert, she nearly jumped out of her skin. Still clutching her phone tightly in her hand, she slowly crept closer to her computer and sat down in the chair.

With a shaky hand, Blair reached forward and swiped a finger across her mousepad to bring the screen back to life.

Her gaze fell to the corner to the screen where the Facebook messenger was showing she had a new message from Noah Foster that simply read _'Hey'_.

She stared at her built-in webcam for a moment before she slammed her computer shut in a fit of panic and jerked the power cord out of it, before flipping the entire thing over and popping out the battery to cut every last bit of power to the laptop.

Her heart was still racing wildly in her chest and for the moment, nothing felt stable. Not her body or her mind, truth be told, she wasn't entirely sure she was even safe in her own house now.

Could it have been a coincidence that she'd gotten that phone call right after accepting Noah's friend requests online and then right after the call ended she got a message from him? He'd seemed nice enough, but maybe she'd been wrong about him.

Maybe his obsession with serial killers should have been a huge red flag, but in truth, she'd enjoyed their talks and hearing his theories.

Almost everyone is interested in the dark details. Like driving past a car accident and slowing down to get a better a look, out loud you say you hope everyone is alright, while you've got your eyes peeled for the gore.

Wrapping her arms around herself, Blair leaned back in her desk chair and thought of how she'd much rather be the passerby –than the car wreck. Rather be the observer than the item on display.

 **•••**

* * *

 **A/N- Thanks for reading! I really hope you all enjoyed the chapter. ^_^**

 **I'd also like to take a moment to thank Emmettluver2010, MzzLightwood, xxXWolfsLullabyXxx, Guest, MORE, RHatch89, Katniss789, Guest, screamingfordays, ana, Straight Edge Queen, ABANDON3D PAG3, Kira Tsumi and Guest for reviewing the first chapter!**  
 **You all really made me so happy! I wasn't sure if there would be any response to this story or not, but so glad to see that there is and I'm hoping you'll all stick with me as I tell more of Blair's story.**

 **If you're not already, you can follow me on my Tumblr (sagelondyn) to see story related posts and edits.**


	3. Soaked in Bleach

**Chapter Three: Soaked in Bleach**

•••

" _For AQR Web Radio, welcome to Autopsy of a Crime. This is Piper Shaw, podcasting the murder investigation of Nina Patterson, day-by-day as it unfolds. It has now been four days since this brutal slaying and local Sheriff Clark Hudson, is still looking for Nina's ex-boyfriend, Tyler O'Neil, as a person of interest. With this town's blood-soaked history, echoes of Lakewood's homegrown psycho, Brandon James, are everywhere. Walking the streets, you can hear terrified locals wondering; could he be back?"_

Blair nervously tapped her foot against the kitchen floor as she listened to the podcast through her earbuds and took another drink from her coffee and her lips curled at the bitterness.

Her mom always teased her that instead of adding sugar to coffee, she drank sugar with some coffee added to it. Not today though, no, today she was on her third cup of strong black coffee in hopes that the caffeine would get her through the day.

Just as she sat her nearly empty cup down on the counter she caught a glimpse of someone behind her in the reflection on the door to the microwave. Whirling around, she grabbed the closest utensil and swiped it through the air –just barely missing Kieran as he jumped backwards.

"Kieran!" She gasped, grabbed the cord to her earbuds and roughly ripping them from her ears, spilling an apology as she did. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry!"

His eyes cut down to where she was still tightly clutching the potato peeler and he asked, "What the hell were you going to do with that?"

Seeing that in her panic, she hadn't grabbed a knife like she'd hoped, she dropped it to the counter and rubbed her hands over her face.

"I'm sorry." She apologized again.

"What happened?" He questioned, stepping closer to her, now that she was unarmed.

Opting out of telling him about the creepy late night phone call that left her unable to sleep the night before, she shrugged, "I'm just on edge, I guess?" Nodding to her phone laying on the counter she added, "Listening to AOC doesn't help either. They're all talk of Brandon James being back and…"

"And you shouldn't have been listening to a true crime podcast this early in the morning?" He guessed with a small smile, though he had the feeling she wasn't being entirely honest with him.

"Pretty much." Blair laughed. Turning to a cabinet, she grabbed a thermos cup and held one up for him, to which he nodded in thanks. Picking up the coffee pot to fill their cups, Blair defended, "You didn't grow up here, so you don't fully understand. Our entire lives we've heard the horror stories of the murders Brandon James committed. Ghost stories of him returning from the dead and picking back up where he left off. My dad even told me that for years they had to scrape the word Murderville off the 'Welcome to Lakewood' sign."

"And it feels like it's happening all over again?" He guessed.

"Pretty much." Blair nodded, "This is the crap I had nightmares about as a kid."  
Most of that was thanks to her older brother Scott, who would constantly tease her about how she was going to be next.

"He was shot and killed at the Wren Lake, right? Like twenty years ago?" Kieran asked, as he took the thermos from her.

"Supposedly." Blair said with an arched brow.

"Then, unless we're talking about a zombie apocalypse situation here, I highly doubt we're going to be seeing Brandon James, anytime soon." He joked, earning a smile from Blair, before adding, "Besides it was probably her boyfriend that killed her."

With that, he took a drink of the coffee and nearly spit it back out. With his face wrinkled he said, "I love strong coffee as much as the next person, but if I wanted a jolt like that –I'd just chew on the coffee beans."

Blair laughed until he reached out and took the thermos away from her.

"Hey-" She started to protest, but he cut her off, "You came at me with a potato peeler, I think you need to be cut off."

"I didn't sleep well last night." Blair admitted to him, with a frown.

"Come on." He nodded, "I have to stop by the station to see my dad before school."

"Ooh!" Blair called out, grabbing her bag and phone off the counter as she scurried after him and pointed out, "There's a Starbucks around the corner from the police station!"

•••

As they reached the station and went inside to find Sheriff Hudson, Kieran and Blair, ran into Noah as he was leaving the sheriff's office.

"Oh, hey!" Noah greeted, looking between them as he joked, "My heros." Looking down he shook his head at himself and said, "Thanks for saving my life."

"You're welcome." Kieran laughed, but Blair's expression gave nothing away as she looked Noah over, trying to determine if he was the one who'd called her the night before.

His eyes stopped on her and a confused expression fell over his face with the way she was looking at him, complete polar opposite from the usual warm and friendly vibes she gave off.

"Hey, Blair…" He added, trying to get a better idea of if he'd somehow done something to upset her or if she was maybe just having a bad day.

"Hello, Noah." She curtly said, crossing her arms over her chest and staring him down.

"Okay…" He breathed under his breath, glancing back over to the sheriff before continuing on his path out of the office and calling over his shoulder, "See you at school."

Once he was gone, Kieran turned his attention to his father, "So, you got that house key?"

"Oh, right! Yeah." Sheriff Hudson nodded, before offering a smile to Blair and greeting, "It's nice to see you again, Blair."

"You too."

She did her best to put on a friendly smile, but inside she was dying to know why Noah had been there.

"What was that about?" The sheriff asked the pair of friends, nodding towards the door that Noah had left through.

"We were at this thing the other night." Kieran started to explain, "Some jocks dumped him on a swim raft. No biggie."

Looking between the teenagers, Sheriff Hudson retrieved the copy of the house key he'd had made for his son and handed it to Kieran before pausing for more information, "Who were the jocks?"

"Sheriff, I'm your son. Not your 21 Jump Street snitch." Kieran countered, and Blair pointed out, "It was just some stupid Wren Lake tradition."

The sheriff watched in silence as the friends left and he blew out a breath, apparently this whole, trying to be a father thing, was a lot more difficult than he'd expected. It was hard to separate his home life from his job.

Once they were back in his car, Kieran silently started to attach the new house key to his key ring and Blair bit her tongue for as long as she could before she asked, "What do you think about him?"

"My dad?" He asked, side-eyeing her.

"No, I mean Noah. What do you think about him?"

"I don't really know him." He answered with a shrug.

"I thought he was cool, but then… I don't know." She shrugged, turning in her seat some as she asked, "Why was your dad talking to him? Does he think he might have killed Nina?"

"I don't know." He shrugged, "He doesn't talk shop with me unless it's trying to get information about something."

"Okay, but I mean, Noah's crazy smart right? He's good with computers, he could probably hack into a webcam with no problem-"

"Wait, wait, wait!" Kieran cut her off, "You think he hacked into your webcam?"

"No… maybe, I don't know. The light wasn't on, but I'm sure someone could stop that from showing up, right?" Blair breathed, running her hands through her hair and realizing, "I sound paranoid."

"What's going on?" He asked, only his tone of voice made it sound more like a demand then a question.

"Last night, after my mom left for work, I got this weird phone call. Some guy talking about how on social media, we pretend to have perfect lives. It was so creepy, he said he was going to tear it all down and that I'd know who he was soon enough. He said some other weird stuff, like that he was closer than I thought… and whoever it was could see me. They were watching me." She explained, pinning her eyes shut as she spoke.

Kieran's mind flashed back to Atlanta and he questioned in a serious tone, "You think it's all happening again?"

"At first I sort of thought so, but the entire phone conversation went off without the words bitch, slut or whore being used even once. So I don't think it's anyone from before." Blair quietly said, not making eye contact as she spoke. "This felt different too… it felt more like whoever was on the other end of the line was playing with me."

Pulling in a breath, she continued, "What made me even think of Noah, is that right before the call, I'd added him on Facebook and followed him back on Instagram and Chirpster. Then literally within a few minutes of the call ending, he messaged me online."

"That's really weird." He conceded, "But it might also just be coincidence." Then the look on his face shifted and he asked, "You want me to talk to him?"

"No!" Blair exclaimed, "It was probably just some jerk messing around and I'm just so screwed up that it's sent me spiraling down into paranoia."

"I would make a comment about how it makes sense with everything you've been through, but I know how much you hate that." He said, getting her attention, before pointing out, "I'm not saying he's not a little strange, but I'm also not getting stalker and serial killer vibes from him either."

"Maybe that's the point, you know? Just looking at him, he seems harmless. Maybe it's an act, the nervous ticks and acting intimidated –could be just to fly under the radar." Blair offered up, and Kieran joked, "I just thought you made him nervous."

"I'm being serious!" She yelled, cringing at how her own voice echoed inside of the car.

"So am I." He argued back, though he didn't raise his voice at all. Pausing for a moment he added, "I think he likes you."

"What if it's some kind of act?" She tossed out, knowing how paranoid she sounded. "In person he's nice and jittery, gets so nervous he starts rambling when he's trying to talk… but that could be completely different when he's not face-to-face with someone. Staying hidden behind the anonymity of a blocked number and sitting at home behind their computer screen can bring out the monsters in people. We've seen it before."

With a slow nod, he adjusted in his seat and put the keys in the ignition. He had no argument there, nor could he blame her at all for this creepy phone-call stirring up her fears and paranoia.

"It also crossed my mind that it might be my brother…" Blair admitted, recapturing Kieran's attention as he was about the start the car.

"Scott?" Kieran exclaimed, "Why the hell would he do something like that."

"I know you hung out with him some in Atlanta, but…" Her voice trailed off, and she softly added, "But there are some things you don't know, and growing up in the same house as him was a nightmare."

"He's my half-brother actually. We have the same dad, Scott's mother died in the delivery room when he was born and even though my mom is the only mother figure he's ever really known, he's only ever called her by her first name and I swear he resents me for having both of my parents." Blair explained, before adding, "He's just messed up. He's really weird, and I mean like bad-weird."

Thinking to himself that Scott seemed normal enough in the times they'd met, he pressed, "What do you mean bad-weird?"

"I mean like…" Her voice trailed off and she took a few moments to get a breath before she explained, "Like when I was just a little kid, we'd gone to the fair one day and I won four fish from that ping-pong toss game, and on the drive home my dad kept talking about what a good arm I had and I guess Scott was jealous of the attention I was getting or something."

Clearing her throat, Blair continued, "That night, he woke me up after everyone had gone to bed and poured bleach into their fish bowl. Scott, uh, he –he made me sit there and watch as they died. They were swimming around completely erratically, running into the sides of the bowl repeatedly. One of them was belly up in the water and couldn't get flipped back over the right way, just kept struggling and trying to move. They were up towards the top of the water, I think just trying desperately to breathe."

With her eyes pinned shut, she placed a hand over her stomach, thinking of how even the scent of bleach nauseated her since that night. Before he could say anything she continued, "It was one of the worst things I've ever seen. The fish were suffering, literally suffocating right in front of our eyes. I was crying and Scott was just laughing."

"Jesus…" Kieran breathed, watching Blair closely as he added, "That's terrible… but it sounds like maybe your brother might be the culprit over it being Noah."

"Yeah, only I haven't talked to my brother in months and the last few holidays he'd came home for, he got along with all of us a lot better. I just don't see why he'd want to start tormenting me now. And you have to admit that it's weird how the phone call coincided with Noah messaging me."

"The entire thing is weird." He agreed, seeing how she was still shaken up, he offered, "If you get another call or something, we could take it to my dad and maybe he can try and trace where it came from, okay?"

Blair managed a smile as she nodded in thanks and brought up that they should be getting to school, since they were already running late.

•••

Even though first period was already underway by the time they reached the school, Blair found herself wandering around the back of the school where there was a large memorial set up to honor Nina's memory.

There were dozens of other students there also, some using it as an excuse to skip class and others where leaving little notes and mementos to the fallen teenager.

As she made her way over to the fence that was practically dripping with flowers and ribbons, Blair couldn't help but roll her eyes at seeing a few notes talking about how much they'd miss Nina –all from students she knew had been tormented by the deceased since grade school.

"Hey there."

Turning around she faced a slightly older brunette with dark framed glasses, holding her iPhone with an HD microphone attachment.

"Hello." Blair greeted, before her eyes widened and she accused, "You're Piper Shaw. I love your podcast!"

"Oh, wow." She laughed, pushing her glasses up on her nose as she complimented, "Good ear." Her eyes squinted slightly and she said, "You look familiar."

With a shrug she replied, "I'm Blair-"

"Blair Bradford!" Piper exclaimed, "Of course. I tried to reach out to you in Atlanta after the attack. I wanted to do a feature on you, but that got shut down real fast."

Looking startled, Blair stammered, "My dad is a lawyer…" Her eyes cut down to the microphone and she asked, "You're not going to be talking about me or what happened in Atlanta, right? I just moved back here and I'm trying to just-"

"Don't worry." Piper cut her off, "I'm just here to follow the investigation of Nina Patterson's murder, though if you change your mind and would like to speak out on your time in Georgia-"

"Not gonna happen." Blair stated, struggling to plaster on a smile as she said, "Sorry you wasted your time back then."

"It wasn't a total waste." Piper laughed and nodded as if Blair should have understood, but when it was clear that the teenager wasn't following along. She smiled and pointed out, "I still talk to your brother from time to time… he didn't tell you?"

"No… Scott and I aren't really close-" Blair was in the process of saying when Noah and Audrey walked over to them.

"Hey guys." Piper greeted, turning her attention to the pair, "I'm Piper Shaw, I'm doing a story for-"

Unable to contain his excitement, Noah blurted out, "Autopsy of a Crime. Yeah, your show is completely addictive."

"Fellow crime geek?" She guessed.

"Totally." He nodded, before noticing the look Audrey was giving him from the corner of her eye and he quickly realized how overly excited he was acting. Clearing his throat he said, "Um, I'm Noah foster and this is Audrey."

Nodding, she said, "I was just talking to Blair here about how I'm covering Nina Patterson's murder." Looking around the trio, Piper leveled with them, "Honestly, I'm trying to get past all of the faux-BFF crap and get a clear picture of the real Nina."

Cracking a smile, and thankful that Piper had easily let everything go about what happened in Atlanta, Blair asked, "Isn't there some sort of superstition about bad luck if you speak ill of the dead?"

"Are you superstitious?" Piper arched a brow.

"Not in the slightest." Bair stated.

"So I take it you guys knew her?"

"Yeah, you could say that. She was a stone-cold bitch who got what she deserved." Audrey spoke with gravel in her tone."

"That paints a pretty clear picture." Piper slowly said, holding her phone closer to Audrey in hopes of getting more information.

Noah stammered, trying to think of something to say and looked over at Blair who had the same dumbstruck expression on her face that he currently did. Knowing that Nina was responsible for posting the video of her and Rachel making out online was weighing heavily on her mind and she was sick of seeing everyone walking around acting like the world had lost an angel when Nina died.

"Can I quote you on that?" Piper asked.

"No!" Blair and Noah exclaimed at the same time, both realizing how a comment like that would probably place Audrey in the center of the actual police investigation –along with making her time at school even more hellacious.

"She's just saying words." Noah added with a nervous laugh, as he put a hand on Audrey's shoulder and squeezed trying to get her to shut up.

"And what about you?" Piper asked him, "Did you have any thoughts on Nina's murder?"

"You know, a few…" He started to answer, but stopped when they heard someone yelling.

Blair looked over to see a highly pissed off Jake walking in their direction as he screamed out, "Someone's ass is toast!"

Looking back to Piper, Noah quickly said, "But some other time sounds good."  
With that he grabbed Audrey's arm in one hand and Blair's in the other, catching her completely off guard when he quickly tried to walk away and pulled her along with them.

"Noah!" Jake yelled when he spotted him.

Not making eye contact and still quickly trying to flee the scene he mumbled, "What's up?"

"Was it you, nerd?" Jake angrily asked, "Was this payback for the lake?"

"Was what payback?" Noah asked, shrinking down away from Jake, while Audrey filmed the entire thing.

"My truck!" He shouted, holding up his phone and displaying a picture of his truck where someone had painted 'DOOSH' on the side in bright red paint.

"Well, I mean, you know…" Audrey laughed, but didn't get to say much else when Jake hissed, "Can it, les-beast."

"Hey, shut up, asshole." Blair angrily snapped as she defensively took a step forward and just like when they were back in fourth grade and Nina started bullying Audrey, Blair was right there to stand up for her.

"No, you shut up!" He snapped right back at her, "Maybe it was you!" He accused, "I saw the way you looked at me after you pulled this one out of the lake." He finished with a nod towards Noah.

"It wasn't me." Blair answered honestly, her tone back down to almost normal, but still laced with venom, she continued, "I know how to spell douche." Before eyeing him for a second and smirked, "Douche."

"Or maybe that's just what you want me to think, you- " Jake started to say, but Noah cut him off as he managed to say in a surprisingly strong voice, "Leave her alone!"

With that, Jake grabbed onto Noah's shirt and pushed back until his back collided with a tree, while both Blair and Audrey yelled for him to let Noah go.

"You know anything about what happened to my truck?" Jake hissed, his face just inches from Noah's, who stood a few inches shorter than he did.

"No…" Noah cringed, his eyes pinning shut as he nervously stammered, "But, you know it is a sad statement at the decline of our public schools."

"That's the wrong answer!"

With Jakes hand now on his throat, Noah squirmed trying to get away from the much stronger teenager, "Whoa! I swear I didn't touch your truck."

"If I find out you're lying, I swear to God, you are dead!"

"I believe you…" Noah stuttered out, his skin growing redder by the second.

"Nice, Jake." Blair loudly said, getting his attention and nodding between where both Audrey and Piper were filming the altercation, "Want to say that directly into the camera? You know the police are still looking for who killed Nina and making death threats at a time like this-"

"Shut it." He ordered, cutting her off as he finally let go of Noah and took a step backwards, fully becoming aware of how the entire courtyard was staring at him. "You were the one arguing the killer could be a girl." He reminded her, before pointing out, "Maybe it's you, huh? You come back to town and someone you hated winds up dead."

Angrily, he stormed off past her, purposely bumping into her shoulder as he went and nearly knocking her down from the impact. Audrey grabbed onto her to keep her from falling and Noah readjusted the straps on his backpack and breathed a sigh of relief.

Once everyone started to go back to their own conversations and the spotlight was off of them, Audrey looked to Noah and commented, "Misspelling douche was an interesting choice."

Cracking a smile, Noah nodded, "Yeah, well I should have used the spray stuff. I got paint all over me. By the time I got home, I looked like Carrie at prom."

"Wait…" Blair breathed, "You really did do it?"

"He deserved worse." Audrey laughed.

"I'm not saying he didn't." Blair softly replied.

After her talk with Kieran earlier that morning, she'd convinced herself that there was no way Noah was the creepy caller from the night before.  
But now seeing him going from a stuttering, seemingly terrified mess to looking rather proud of himself for what he'd done, all in a matter of a few minutes was unsettling. Maybe anonymously calling her to scare her wasn't so far-fetched after all.

"Hey, you okay?" Noah asked her.

"Yeah, I'm just tired." Her tone changed as she stared him down and said in an accusing voice, "I didn't sleep much last night."

Audrey who'd been watching them through the small screen on her camcorder, raised her head and looked between them.

Not sure how to react from the way her mood had seemed to shift so suddenly, Noah fell back into a bout of nervous laughter. "The way you're saying that, makes it sound like it's somehow my fault…"

"No, of course not." She answered, not letting up on her intense stare, "Why would that be your fault, Noah?"

"I… uh…" He cleared his throat in an attempt to form actual words, "I don't know, you just…" His voice trailed off, unsure of what to say to her.

"See you later." Blair mumbled as she pushed past the pair of friends to head into the school.

•••

It was later that afternoon when Blair saw Audrey walking down the hallway, looking infinitely more upset then she was hours before.

Following her to her locker, Blair asked, "Hey, everything okay?"

"I hate people." Audrey muttered, not looking up from her phone where she'd been reading more of the cruel comments people had been leaving on the video and other social media sites about her and Rachel.

Pulling in a deep breath, she held her phone out for Blair to see as she said, "Get a load of this."

"I saw the comments."

Darkening the screen on her cellphone and tucking it back in her pocket, Audrey scoffed, "I just wish it would all go away." Quickly realizing how it sounded she clarified, "Not what happened, I like Rachel and I'm not ashamed –it's just…"

Her voice trailed off and Blair pushed, "It's just what?"

"Rachel goes to a Catholic school and since the video was posted, everyone there are being complete bitches and making her life hell. I don't care what people think, but she's not like that." Emotion was heavy in her eyes as she stopped putting in her locker combination and admitted, "It's not just the class-A dicks online, she's even been getting notes at school calling her ugly and fat –the worst ones are people telling her to kill herself."

Blowing out a heavy sigh, Blair leaned against the lockers next to Audrey's open locker and quietly said, "We grew up being afraid of big scary monsters hiding under our beds –what no one told us, is that the real monsters live inside of people."

"Right." She agreed, swallowing hard before opening up, "It's not just what's going on with Rachel that's bothering me. I'm so mad at Emma. It's not even just about her being with Nina that night they filmed us-"

"Whoa, wait. Emma was in the parking lot that night?" Her eyebrows lowered; she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "And she didn't stop Nina? That doesn't sound like Emma at all."

"She straight up admitted it, Blair." Audrey confided, "And what makes it all so much worse is how she was acting recently, acting like we were friends again and I actually believed the act. Turns out she was just trying to clear her own conscience."

"It wasn't an act."

Turning around they saw Emma standing behind them, wearing a pained expression as she repeated, "It wasn't an act. I really want to move past this."

Rolling her eyes, Audrey slammed her locker and started to walk, but Emma stopped her as she asked, "Can we please talk?"

"What's there to say?" She asked loudly, and Emma glanced around to see some people were watching them. "You and Nina filmed me and Rachel. She posted it all over the web, you lied about it and now you feel guilty. There we talked."

"You're right, I didn't stop Nina from filming you and I should have. But…" Letting out a sigh, her tone changed as she questioned, "Hey, can we please find a way to move on from this?"  
Offering a hopeful smile in Blair's direction, she continued, "We're all back together again and you guys have no idea how much I've missed this. And come on, I mean, pretty soon, there's going to be a new headline."

Immediately she regretted saying that, she didn't think it made things any better, but it was what everyone kept trying to say to soothe her. But clearly, repeating it back to Audrey and Blair was a mistake when they both stared back at her with near matching shocked and appalled expressions.

"Oh, so I should be comforted by the fact that someone else is bound to be humiliated today?" Audrey scoffed and Blair nodded in agreement, "Just because something turns into old news, doesn't make it right."

"And those comments aren't going away and Rachel can't ignore them like I can." Audrey added, "She won't even text me back."

Almost on cue her phone chimed from her pocket, followed just a split second later by Blair and Emma both getting a text as well. All three of them let out a gasp as they opened the message to reveal a GIF of a hooded figure wearing the Brandon James's mask, standing next to the pool with Nina's bloody, dead body floating in the water behind them. The words ' _payback's a bitch_ ' flashed in bright red lettering, and the trio looked around as everyone else in the hallway were also staring at their phones in shock and horror.

"That's the Brandon James mask." Emma pointed out, holding her phone out to compare their screens.

"Guess you got your new headline." Audrey coldly stated. Tucking her phone back into her pocket, she turned and walked away.

"You think the person behind the mask is the killer?" Emma quietly asked and without thinking, Blair replied, "I don't know who else would pose for a selfie next to her dead body."

Seeing the look on her face, Blair cringed, "Sorry, sorry. I know Nina was your friend."

Darkening the screen on her iPhone, Emma nodded before saying, "It's crazy, Nina's gone, but I still find myself thinking about how much she'd love all the attention."

Clearly able to see that the last thing Blair wanted to talk about was Nina, Emma looked at her with the same hopeful expression that always seemed to get her way when it came to Blair and asked, "I know Audrey's upset with me, she has every right to be, but this doesn't change things between you and me, right? We've just started to talk more and-"

"I don't know, Em." Blair admitted to her. "You were always one of the nicest and kindest people I knew, and maybe somewhere inside you're still that person. I hope you're still that person. But I don't think you understand how big of a deal this all is."

"I get it." Emma tried to say, but Blair wasn't hearing it.

"No, you don't get it. That video will never go away, don't you get that? For every copy that's taken down, ten more are out there ready to take it's place. The stuff people put on the internet is forever and until you've had some video of you go viral –you have no idea what it feels like." Blair lectured barely taking a breath before going on, "You can't escape it and you can't un-see the cruel comments other people make. It's always there and every time you think the situation is behind you –you turn the corner and get slapped in the face with it all over again…"

Her voice trailed off and her brown eyes widened as she stared at Emma and stammered, "Uh…"

About halfway through her outburst, Emma started to pick up on the fact that Blair seemed to be venting about her own personal experience, rather than still arguing on Audrey's behalf.

"You're right." She agreed, "I don't know what that's like… but, do you?"

"I need to get to class." Blair curtly said, spinning on her heels and leaving in the same direction Audrey had gone.

"Blair, what aren't you telling me?" Emma called out, letting out a frustrated noise when the other teenager didn't look back at her, "Blair!"

 **•••**

* * *

 **A/N - I hope you guys liked the chapter!  
**

 **I want to thank everyone who is following and/or added this story to their favorites!**

 **I'd also like to thank RHacth89, Hotstreak's crossover stories, Straight Edge Queen, Katniss789, Emmettluver2010, xxXWolfsLullabyXxx, MzzLightwood, ana, Land of a billion lights, and RandomTeddyBear for being awesome and reviewing the last chapter.  
**

 **If anyone is interested, I made a video to go along with this story. You can find it on my Youtube account (link is up on my profile).**

 **Thanks for reading. ^_^**


	4. No Light, No Light

**Chapter Four: No Light, No Light**

•••

"Alright guys, phones down." Mr. Branson instructed as he looked around the classroom to where every single student was still looking at their phones after a mass text of a GIF of Nina's body was sent to the entire school.

Blair had her phone out, but she kept watching Noah, trying to make up her mind on whether she thought he had been behind the creepy phone call.

With the way he kept looking over at her wide-eyed and the few times he'd tossed his hand up in an awkward wave, she couldn't tell if he was just nervous, or if he knew she was onto him.

"But the Brandon James GIF put us on the map, Mr. B." Jake excitedly said, his mood seemed much improved from earlier that morning when he had his hand around Noah's throat, "I mean we've got like seven out of the top ten trending hashtags right now."

"You know, maybe you should focus more on your studies and less on Lakewood's web-buzz." Their teacher retorted.

"Which is what the killer is counting on." Noah spoke up and Blair made a mental note of how the only time Noah didn't seem nervous with attention, was when he was talking about serial killers.

"Alright, Will Graham." Branson took the bait and asked Noah, "What is this killer's design?"

"Well, murder's a lonely game, you know. I mean, say you're the killer, okay? You sneak into Nina's house, you skulk around and scare her and then you kill her. Boom! But then what? You take a victory lap around the pool? You just stand there watching the blood spread out into the water, thinking your crazy guy thoughts." Noah replied.

"Creepy monologue alert." Brooke mumbled under her breath, as she looked back down to her cellphone.

Thinking back to the phone call she'd gotten, Blair remembered the person on the other end of the line talking about how everyone online just wants attention. Posting and blogging about their movements –perfect smiles, perfect lives.

"So, what you're getting at is that the killer wants attention? Basically, it's no good if he's the only one watching?" Blair spoke up, eyeing him suspiciously as she spoke.

"Exactly, yeah!" Noah agreed, smiling as he continued, "Uh, it's the age of Instagram and Youtube and Tumblr. I mean we need to share the things we do or it's like it never happened."

Blair's throat seemed to run dry at hearing his words and her mind flashed back to the phone call, and again how it all happened right after she'd added him on social media and she still couldn't push it out of her mind how directly after the call, he'd messaged her online.

It was like every time she'd convinced herself that he couldn't have been the caller, he said or did something to make her question him all over again.

When Riley's phone went off, Mr. Branson grew irritated, "Riley, phones off."

"Sorry, Mr. B. " She apologized before looking back to her phone and explaining, "My friend from Saint Mary's texted… a girl that goes there died."

"No way!" Brooke called out, "Who was it?"

"How'd it happen?" Jake asked.

"It doesn't say." She shrugged.

Blair glanced back to where Audrey was growing increasingly restless and kept checking her phone and her heart sank as she remembered how she'd told her that Rachel went to a Catholic school.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Riley. But why don't we get back to-"

Interrupting their teacher, Audrey scrambled to her feet and said, "I have, uh, to go to the bathroom."

Once she was gone, and Mr. Branson saw no one was interested in the lesson he'd planned for the day, he said, "Why don't we all just take a few moments to clear our heads and get focused?"

The seconds ticked by, feeling like hours, as Blair watched the classroom door in hopes that Audrey would be back soon.

After several minutes, Blair stood up and announced, "I have to go to the bathroom too."

"Yeah, me too." Emma called over her shoulder as they made their way out into the hallway.

Blair slowed down as she saw Audrey with her forehead leaned against the lockers, but Emma rushed right over to her and placed a hand on her back, "Audrey, is everything okay?"

Roughly jerking away from her touch, Audrey stared up to her with red-rimmed eyes and tears running down her cheeks. "I called Rachel to check on her. Her mom answered the phone…"

"Oh my god…" Blair breathed, stepping up to them and already expecting the worst news possible – that Rachel bad been killed.

Only the news Audrey delivered next was even worse; not only was she dead, but she'd taken her own life.

"They found her hanging from her ceiling fan." In a tone full of blame she looked at Emma and repeated, "She's dead!"

Immediately Emma's eyes filled with tears of her own as Audrey stormed away from her.

Rachel was dead, she'd killed herself and Emma felt the full force of the guilt land squarely on her shoulders. She knew it was wrong when Nina was recording them, she felt it in her gut that it was wrong.  
Yet, she'd done nothing to try and stop her.

Audrey's words swirled around inside of her heavy mind, replaying over and over how she'd told her that Rachel couldn't shut out everyone's cruel remarks.

"Blair…" Emma sniffled, looking over to where she was standing, "I –I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I didn't know Nina was going to post the video. Oh my god, I should have done something… I should have-"

"While I would love to comfort you and your guilty conscience right now, I think Audrey needs it more –don't you?" Blair said, shaking her head as she turned and hurried down the hallway.

She wasn't sure how she could make the situation better for Audrey. Nothing she could say or do would ease her pain or bring Rachel back, but at the very least, she could remind her that she's not alone.

•••

After finding Audrey sitting on the floor towards the back of the library hidden out of view by shelves of books, Blair slowly sat down beside her and pulled her knees up to her chest.

Knowing that Audrey was someone who hated for people to see her cry, Blair stared straight ahead and finally breathed, "I don't know what to say, Audrey. We all know Emma was always better at doing the comforting thing."

"Yeah?" She scoffed, "Well, Emma is the last person I want around me right now."

"Understandable." Blair nodded.

After several minutes passed of her being unable to stop the waterworks that had been let loose when she heard Rachel was dead, Audrey said, "I just keep thinking this has to be some terrible nightmare. I mean, I knew Rachel and she wouldn't have killed herself." Angrily swatting more tears away from her blotchy red cheeks, she repeated, "She wouldn't have killed herself."

"You said yourself that she couldn't shake those comments the way that you had, and the whole thing probably isn't just solely based on the video, but it may have been what finally pushed her past her breaking point." Blair quietly offered up.

"No." Audrey argued, "I knew her, and if she was really suicidal then that means I missed all of the signs and-"

"No way." Blair said louder than she'd meant to. Pulling in a breath she shook her head and looked over at her, "Don't put that on yourself, okay? Some people are really good at hiding things-"

"Or she wasn't suicidal." Audrey argued.

Anxiously, Blair, twisted the mood ring she always wore on her thumb and pointed out, "Not everyone who's suicidal looks the same, Audrey. Not everyone is unable to get out of bed and shutting themselves off from the world."

"What are you talking about?" She asked, wiping her eyes and turning on the floor to get a better look at her old friend. Her gaze fell to where Blair was fiddling with her thumb ring and she knew that meant there was something really big going on that she wasn't talking about. "Are you talking about yourself?"

Staring down to the green carpet on the floor, Blair said, "Look, Audrey, I went through something really bad in Atlanta-"

"What happened?"

"It's not important."

"It is to me."

"The CliffsNotes version is that I did something really stupid, okay? There was this guy –he was a little weird, didn't have a lot of friends, not like I did either though. He was kind of a troublemaker, but he was always nice to me and we ended up becoming really good friends… and then more." Blair started to explain, a bitter smile pulling at her features as she brought up the memories.  
"I was a different person. Things were falling apart between my parents, I felt so out of place in Atlanta and overall I was just really unhappy –until I met him. When I was with him I could be someone else, I pushed the limits and just…"

"What happened?" Audrey softly asked as she rubbed her already painfully raw eyes and waited for her friend to go on.

"He, uh…" She breathed, "One night, it was pretty late and we'd been texting and things got pretty racy and he wanted me to send him some pics." With a shrug, Blair added, "I think you know what kind of pics I'm talking about."

Audrey nodded, and started to open her mouth to tell Blair she didn't have to go on if she didn't want to, but before she could Blair quickly said, "I took some pictures… but I didn't send them to him. I didn't send them to anyone Audrey, but by the end of the week everyone at school had seen them. It was a nightmare."

"But I thought you said you didn't send out pictures-"

"I didn't!" Blair cut her off, "They were on my computer though, and at some point he had to have gotten into my house and he emailed them to himself –and then posted them online for everyone else to see. I wanted something done, I wanted him punished for ruining my life… but you see, the pictures were sent from _my_ email account to his and there was no way to prove that I wasn't the person who sent them and being under eighteen…"

Shaking her head, Blair explained, "As much as my dad wanted to take legal action against him, he basically said that if we tried, things could come back on me and I could face charges too. So pretty much there was nothing we could do… and then he'd obsessively text me saying how sorry he was and swore that he'd never sent the pics to anyone, the he thought I'd sent to him… can you believe that? It got so bad that he followed me around everywhere trying to convince me that he wouldn't do something like that to me, even broken into my house a few times when I refused to see him. Eventually we were able to get a restraining order against him, but the damage had already been done."

"After that I had no friends really, aside from the mean or sexual comments in the hallways at school, no one would even talk to me. Then one day at lunch this guy on the football team sat with me, and he was really nice to me and I was just… I was so lonely and naïve enough to believe that he actually liked me. But he lied to me and said that he and his girlfriend were broken up –they weren't and he was only interested in me because of the pictures." She could barely get her voice to raise over a whisper as she spoke.

Swallowing hard and closing her eyes Blair admitted, "I slept with him and it turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life, but I just wanted to believe he liked me, you know? I just wanted to feel something other than loneliness. His girlfriend found out and she and her friends came after me. It started with all these phone calls, the stuff you'd expect, telling me what a slut I was. Pretty soon, any post I made online immediately had all these comments, calling me terrible names and if it was a picture of me they'd call me ugly and nitpick at every little thing about the way I looked. A couple months later, there was this party and this group of girls… they beat me up really bad."

"Blair…" Audrey whispered, tears burning at her eyes for more than just one reason now.

"They didn't just beat me up." She found the courage to admit, "They held me down and –and they cut my hair and wrote the word 'whore' on my forehead in permanent marker. It was the single scariest and most humiliating thing I've ever gone through. Someone filmed the whole thing and they posted it online and I was completely mortified. Then the racy pictures of me seemed to resurface and… you wouldn't believe some of the comments on the pictures and video…" Her voice trailed off and she conceded, "Actually, I guess you can."

"But the point is, is that I got out of bed every morning and showered, styled my new shortcut hair, brushed my teeth –somedays I even wore make-up. I went to school and came home, I'd go and see movies with my mom on the weekends and we went shopping. I was going through the motions like normal, but I wasn't really there. I can remember sitting in class, copying down class notes off the board and inside all I could do was dream up different ways to die. And my mom, she'd tell me how proud she was of me, how I was so brave and…"

Her voice cracked and she looked up to see fresh tears running down Audrey's face, and now Blair's cheeks were tear stained too as she dredged up memories of a time in her life that she'd give anything to erase.

"And the truth was, I hoped and I prayed for even an ounce of the strength she thought I had, because then maybe I wouldn't have gone to bed every single night hoping I wouldn't ever wake back up." There was a pained look on her face and it was clear she was having a hard time talking about it, but she pushed through it. "It was kind of like… like that year we all went to that cornfield maze for Halloween and got separated away from the rest of the group because Emma had dropped her phone at some point and we all went to try and find it. You remember that?"

"Yeah." Audrey nodded with a hoarse voice.

"It was such a dark night, there weren't any stars and I swear we couldn't even see the moon and the corn stalks were so much taller than the three of us. We spent over an hour wandering around in there, all of us thought we were never going to find our way out." Running her tongue over her dry lips, Blair continued, "That's sort of what I felt like. Like I was stuck in some dark maze, with walls so high that there was no possible way to see a way out of it –no proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. There was just, not even darkness really, there was just a void. Nothingness. Living hurt too much."

Wiping her tears away, Blair struggled to speak through the lump that had formed in her throat, "The point is, is that –that whole time my mom was so proud of me for being strong, I was weaker then I'd ever been before. I was just standing on the ledge waiting for some gust of wind to knock me off, and no one knew how bad things truly were. Sometimes people aren't as transparent and easy to read as you'd think."

"I'm sorry." Audrey managed to say, crying even harder. Both for the pain of losing Rachel and hearing everything her friend had gone through. The knowledge of knowing she'd almost lost Blair felt like a weight pushing down on her chest.

"See?" Blair sputtered through her own fresh round of tears, "I told you Emma was better at the comforting thing."

Somehow managing a hoarse attempt at a laugh, Audrey nodded, "Yeah, when you try it, we always ended up crying more."

Pulling in a loud, gasping breath as the laughter hit her, Blair nodded and used the sleeves over her jacket to try and dry her own eyes. Clearing her throat, she apologized, "I didn't drive to school, or I'd offer to get you out of here."

Starting to stand up, Audrey said, "I think I'm just going to the office to call my dad to come and get me."

"I'll walk with you." Blair offered.

Once Audrey called her dad and he agreed to come get her, Blair sat with her outside of the office until Noah found them. At that time she left to give them some time alone, hoping that he'd be better at comforting her distraught friend than she'd been.

 **••• The next night •••**

Walking into one of the stalls in the girls bathroom at the school, Blair shut the door and leaned against it as she closed her eyes and blew out a heavy sigh.

The basketball game that night had barely been underway for twenty minutes and she was already kicking herself for agreeing to go with Emma and Brooke. Even in the bathroom she could hear the cheering from the gymnasium.

There were times when being around large crowds seemed to steal the breath right from her lungs and the gym had started to feel stuffier by the second. It wasn't long after Brooke had left to get some licorice whips from the concession stand, that Blair also headed that way with the intent of getting a small popcorn. Of course, her plans had been spoiled when she witnessed a rather unsettling conversation between Brooke and Mr. Branson.

It was already clear to see that Brooke was interested in their English Lit teacher, but through watching them interacting in class and passing by the room several times between classes to see Brooke hanging out in there –she'd already started to suspect there might be something going on between them.

Then, while standing off to the side of the line for the concession stand, Blair had overheard Branson telling Brooke how much he missed her, to which Brooke reminded him how he'd been the one to cancel their _'study sessions'_.

The entire exchange had been uncomfortable and left her with a bad taste in her mouth. She'd escaped to the bathroom after Brooke had spotted her watching them.

Taking her phone out of her pocket, she was just about to text Emma and say she wasn't feeling well and was going home, but she stopped when she heard the door to the bathroom open.

Followed by the sound of a few heavy footsteps and then complete silence.

With her posture tensing, Blair turned around and faced the door of the stall she was hiding out in and waited for another movement or sound. The footsteps she'd heard were clearly walking into the room and she'd only heard the door open and shut once.

In a wavering tone she called out, "Brooke?"  
Wondering if the teenager had followed her and was going to ask her to keep quiet about what she'd seen.

When there was no response, Blair cleared her throat and asked, "Hello?"

Just as she was about to push open the stall door and see what was going on, she heard the footsteps again; each one being firmly planted down and echoing through the room, making it abundantly clear that whoever it was –was making their presence known.

She heard one of the sinks turn on, followed by another and then another. The sound of the rushing water didn't block out the sounds of the steps getting closer to the middle stall she was in.

Holding her breath, she leaned closer to the door to look out of the crack and see who was in there with her. Though with the hair prickling on the back of her neck, she had a feeling she didn't want to see.

As she peeked through the crack, she saw someone dressed in all black and wearing a hood turn on another sink and her heart started to race near violently in her chest. She backed away from the door and tried to think through her current state of panic.

With trembling hands she pulled her phone back out and was going to text Emma for help; tell her what was going on and that she was officially scared and completely freaked out.

But when someone aggressively kicked the door open to the stall right next to hers, she nearly screamed and her phone fell from her hands, colliding with the floor and just like in the lake when she felt something under the water –she was frozen.

Air rushed in and out of her lungs, she clamored to cover her ears as another stall door was kicked in and the banging sound was almost deafening and she wondered how long until the door was kicked in on her stall.

Cringing she expected another loud noise to follow, but the room fell into a stillness.

Silence –aside from the still running water, which was now spilling over the sides and spreading across the floor from the sink drains being clogged.

When Blair noticed the water on the floor, it was starting to close in on her. Kneeling down she swooped up her cellphone before the water could touch it.

Her throat ran dry when she heard the footsteps again. Remaining crouched down, she watched as the dark hooded figure came to stop directly outside of her stall.

Desperately clutching onto her phone in one hand, she place the other over her nose and mouth to try and quiet her breathing and slowly rose back up to her feet.

Someone was right on the other side of that door, and that someone knew she was there as well.

Her mind was racing; logic telling her to scream for help or call someone to come to her aide. After all, no one else knew she'd went into the bathroom. She was alone, on her own –aside from the person in there tormenting and scaring her.

Her fingers fumbled against the touch screen and as much as she wanted to call someone, she couldn't keep her eyes off the black shoes visible from under the stall door long enough to do anything.

Were they going to kick her door in? Was it someone just playing a prank, or was she in serious danger?

A million questions bounced around inside of her head, along with trying to desperately work out an escape plan for any possible scenario of what might happen next.

One thing she knew for sure was that she couldn't keep standing there, she was a sitting duck for whoever was in there with her and if they kicked that door in, she'd have no place to run.

Maybe if she dropped down to the floor, she could scurry under the stall walls and get to the door to run for help. Or maybe if it came down it to, she could climb up on the toilet and try to see who was in there with her.

Maybe –

The footsteps retreated from their stance and her racing thoughts halted to an abrupt stop, solely focused on their continued echoing until the door to the bathroom opened and shut again.

Scrambling to get her phone back into her jacket pocket, she closed her eyes and then rubbed her hands over her face trying to get the courage she needed to make a run for it.

Perhaps whoever had been there had really left, or the scarier thought was that they were still in there and this was a cruel trick to give her a false sense of security.

Either way, she had to try and get out of there.

Pulling in a deep breath, her soaked shoes sloshed around in the water on the floor as she stepped back up to the stall door and slid the lock to open. The metal scraping against metal was, for the moment, seemingly the loudest sound on earth.

Taking in another breath and silently hoping it wouldn't be her last, she quickly pulled the door open and darted through the empty bathroom to the door, where she wasted no time jerking the door open and running out into the hallway.

The slick soles of her shoes couldn't find traction on the floor when she tried to come to a stop after racing around the corner and seeing someone was there. With a gasp she tried to stop, but her legs and wet shoes betrayed her and she fell to the floor.

"Oh my god!" Noah yelled as he watched Blair completely wipe out on the floor right in front of him. Running towards her, he knelt down, "Are you okay?"

"I –I…" She gasped, trying to catch her breath, still trapped in a complete state of panic.

Realizing who'd she'd almost ran into, she slapped his hands away as he tried to help her up and demanded to know, "What are you doing here?"

"I came with Audrey, she's filming game highlights-"

"No!" She yelled cutting him off, as she scrambled up to her feet and stared at him wide-eyed. "I mean here, right here –in this hallway. What are you doing here?"

"Why are you wet?" He asked, as he saw the end of her jeans and shoes were sopping wet, "What happened?"

Roughly rubbing her hands through her hair, she shook her head frantically back and forth.

Growing increasingly worried, he cautiously took a step forward and tried to keep his voice steady and calm, "Blair? Are you okay?"

"No." She admitted, her voice was muffled behind her hands, until she helplessly dropped her arms and her eyes locked with his, as she continued, "I am so far from okay right now."

 **•••**

* * *

 **A/N – Thank you guys so much for reading, I hope you all liked the chapter and can't wait to hear what you thought!**

 **If you're interested in following me on tumblr, I recently changed my name on there to 'twofacedharveydent'. I post chapter updates and other edits to go along with my stories.  
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 **Thanks to: RHatch89, Straight Edge Queen, Hotstreak's crossover stories, foxcharin, emmetluver2010, xxXWolfsLullabyXxx, lilrilakkuma, and annabelleigh1996 for reviewing the last chapter. Thank you so much for the support and kind words :)**


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